CentreRight

Allister Heath appointed Editor of City AM

I must start by declaring an interest. I've known Allister Heath for over ten years, since we attended the London School of Economics together in the late 1990s. It was announced yesterday that Allister has been appointed Editor of City AM, the influential business daily with a circulation of just under 100,000. This is fantastic news because as Economics Editor and then Editor of The Business, Allister has been at the forefront of holding the Government to account for its mishandling of the economy and for arguing the case for lower taxes and a more free market approach from all the political parties. It is now mainstream opinion to criticise Gordon Brown for his raid on pension funds, the sale of gold when prices were low or declining public sector productivity, but Allister led the way in honing these critiques before they were fashionable. His appointment is definitely a victory for the good guys.

Local Government payroll growth

Our new report Council Spending Uncovered 2: Middle Management Pay is out today.  We've had a very predictable response from the councils.  Some have blamed us for their failure to separate out teachers from regular council workers.  Others have cited competition for staff from the private sector.

This is a pretty weak argument when you consider that many of these councils had dozens of staff paid more than the £60,000 average pay that directors at companies with turnovers of £5-50 million enjoy (according to research for the Institute of Directors, not online).  They're using their half a billion pound publicity machine to try and deny this report instead of accepting the obvious truth that the number of staff earning over £50,000 shouldn't be going up three times as fast in local councils as it is in the economy as a whole.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people really attached to the status quo in the Council Tax debate: councils blame the Government and the Government blames councils.  No one takes responsibility.  Ordinary taxpayers pay the price in the form of a doubling of Council Tax over the last ten years with further big rises to come.

Re: Re: 2008's 'must buy' book

Hi Stephan, your reply to my post from last night is spot on. Government waste is not enough to convince people of the case for lower taxes. Voters do believe that politicians waste their cash - more than half the public believe that £20+ of every £100 the Government spends is wasted - but they don't believe that politicians have the wherewithal to tackle waste.

YouGov (you may have heard of them!) asked the following question for us in August last year. "Do you agree or disagree that if Britain reformed public services and cut waste it could lower taxes without having to cut spending on vital services?" 66% agreed - up from 54% in January 2007. Disagreement was at 18% and 19% respectively. This is very encouraging for tax cutters.

What is the TPA doing to push forward the public service reform agenda? Look out for TPA papers on the number of deaths caused by the NHS on Friday, and a paper on prison reform by Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, over the weekend. This is our core battle for 2008.

For more information on this subject, CentreRight readers may be interested in our Better Government position paper and our 2007 Party Conference Season Poll.

2008's 'must buy' book

I've just spotted in the latest catalogue from Constable, that a new book is coming out in March on government waste. David Craig, of Plundering the Public Sector fame, will reveal that since 1997, public spending has increased by around a trillion pounds - £1,000,000,000,000 - over £50,000 for every household in Britain. The subtitle of Squandered, pictured right, is 'How New Labour are wasting over one trillion pounds of our money'. One interesting fact which emerges from the advert is that by 2009, each person working in the private sector will be paying more each month into the pension of a civil servant than they will into their own pension. That should make for an interesting election.

£138 to change a light bulb

There's a great article in The Sun today about how Birmingham City Council is apparently charging council residents £138 every time it changes a light bulb. In the 2005 edition of the Bumper Book of Government Waste, we revealed that Hull City Council charged £50 a time to change light bulbs. Who said inflation isn't back with a vengeance?